


The Taste of You

by karmula



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Domestic Fluff, Drug Use, F/F, Femslash, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Implied Romance, Post-Canon, Post-Series, Road Trips, Travel, pricefield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 06:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5528729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karmula/pseuds/karmula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max and Chloe finally manage to take that road trip, partly because they are desperate to escape the guilt after everything that happened in Arcadia Bay and partly to spend some quality time re-connecting with each other. A series of firsts ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pumpkin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



> I know I wasn't your Secret Santa, and I know this is both late and incomplete, but I was reading through the prompts for Life is Strange and was totally inspired by yours, so I decided to combine a few of them (road trip, aftermath, etc) into one five-part fic that explores some of those elements. I hope you don't mind! I'll probably continue this up until the new year, at which time I hope to have completed it. I just wanted to post what I've done now so that you know that it, you know, exists. I hope you had a Merry Christmas and that you have happy holidays!
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters portrayed, nor do I claim to. All rights go to the creators of Life is Strange.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Chloe buy their first pet together.

 “A cat?” Chloe says, wrinkling her nose and furrowing her brow as Max holds up the mangy orange kitten, its toes and tummy covered with bristly white fur. Two wide yellow eyes stare back at her, slightly narrowed, pupils shrunk down to thin slits. “ _That_ cat?” As if in response, the kitten wriggles its little pink triangle of a snout and hisses, like it’s _mocking_ her.

“Why not?” Max protests, cuddling the ball of fluff to her chest, which emits a muffled meow of pleasure. “She’s beautiful. Sure, she’s a little scruffy, but then again, so are you.” Max elbows the taller girl playfully and Chloe rolls her eyes, biting her lip to hold back a smile. She’s never been able to hold out against Max, so she’s knows it’s only a matter of time before that grungy thing is perched on their dashboard, meowing and putting its tiny white paws in all their food, leaving hair all over the place in an irritating yet strangely endearing way, but still, she’s hesitant.

After all, she’s never really been a cat person.

She sighs, unfolding her arms. “This is our first pet, y’know. That shit’s a lotta responsibility. What are you even gonna call it? Socks?”

“As if I would name _her_ something as cliché as _Socks_ ,” Max replies indignantly, loosening her grip on cat as she senses Chloe’s walls coming down. The cat meows appreciatively, placing its paws on her chest with two soft thuds and cocking its head as it inspects her face carefully, sniffing eagerly.

Max wonders what the kitten’s judgement will be – she definitely smells a little off after a week of none-stop driving in Frank’s musty old RV, and her hair is a tangled mess, not to mention how grimy her skin feels (note to self: the next time they make a stop, it should be at a Walmart to pick up face wash and other general necessities, not at a pet store) – but it’s not like the kitten is much better.

“What, then?”

“Hmmm… Pumpkin?”

“Pumpkin?” Chloe asks, in a you-totally-can’t-be-serious kind of tone. _Because Pumpkin is less cliché than Socks._ Max’s face falls, pouting her bottom lip comically, and Chloe laughs, waving her hand in a vague gesture of assent. “Ugh, fine. But we gotta hurry, okay? I left the van idling in the parking lot. We’re still not there yet.”

The brunette smiles, wide and crooked and blissfully, effortlessly happy, in a way she hasn’t in far too long. She pays for the kitten at the counter – a discounted price, just because it’s a little more roughed-up than its siblings – and the two – now three – of them leave, climbing into the idling vehicle like it’s a second skin. Chloe takes the wheel, and the newly-christened Pumpkin leaps into her lap, rubbing her tiny head into the girl’s belly and purring contentedly as she curls into a ball and falls instantly asleep.

Neither of them know where _there_ is yet, only that it is far, far away from Arcadia Bay, from Max’s powers, from the past, from anything and anyone that isn’t each other and their lived-in RV. And now, Pumpkin.

Max looks at Chloe, admires her silhouette against the golden light that filters through the dusty RV window, watches her as a slow smile teases the corners of her mouth as she strokes the kitten’s head, scratches the soft, sensitive flesh behind its ears. She just hopes, with another body, however small, to keep her warm, that Chloe will finally be able to fall asleep at night.


	2. Crepes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Chloe stop at a road-side diner for breakfast.

“I’m hungry,” Max says, taking her eyes off the barren roadside to look at her partner. The sun is beginning to rise, bathing everything in a yellow-golden light, illuminating the motes of dust that flit to and fro in the air like tiny crystals.

Chloe presses her mouth into a thin line. “There’s pizza in the fridge, I think. Or a gas station –” She trails off, tracing their route with the tip of her gnawed index finger on the map in her lap, pressing her nail into a black dot on the road a few miles ahead. “Like, a half hour away.” She puts her hand back on the steering wheel and floors it, coaxing the RV to go faster. It groans in protest, the faintest beginnings of a whine humming in the bowels of the engine.

Not for the first time, Max wonders if Frank would approve, if he’s looking down now happy that his baby is getting a little use, that it’s serving such a noble cause as harbouring two escapists, two wanderers searching for an elusive destination neither of them are sure they even want to find. Though if he is, he’d probably wish – and wouldn’t be alone in doing so – that Chloe would at least go a little bit easier on the pedals.

“I feel like something hot.”

“Frank’s stove works, you can heat something up.”

“Chloe,” Max insists, placing a gentle hand on the taller girl’s shoulder to still her. She can feel tensed muscle, wound tight after so many hours of non-stop driving that’s worn their patience down thinner than a butterfly’s wing. “I’m hungry. And I’m tired. So are you. Let’s just… Let’s pull over somewhere and get breakfast at a diner, okay? Refuel, recharge.”

Eventually, Chloe relents. They pull over at the first signs of life, a tiny desert town with one gas station, a weathered hotel, a police station, and a diner, several beaten houses trembling under the sun in a loose half-circle around the town centre’s perimeter. Pumpkin tries to follow them out, desperate to stretch her legs, but Max just patiently sets her down on the bed, closing the door behind her as she leaves.

The diner is all but abandoned, one stout waitress with long red nails and a bad dye job manning the counter. Even so, it feels cramped; furnished with tacky, grimy décor that looks like something out of an 80s movie, everything is covered in a slick, tangible layer of grease, to which dust and small insects have been condemned, their faceted wings glittering from all four corners of the building underneath flickering fluorescents.

The waitress smiles welcomingly at them and Max smiles back, making for the counter – but Chloe grudgingly takes a seat in a corner booth instead, eyes glinting like flint and her face stony. There’s no way she’s sitting at the counter, not if it means making some stranger’s day easier. Fuck that.

“Sorry, we’re both just a little tense. It’s our first stop since we started driving and we’re really tired,” Max explains, trying – and failing – to excuse Chloe’s manners as she slides into the booth beside her, taking the girl’s hand underneath the table and squeezing. “I’m sure a nice, hot meal will fix us right up. Um, can we just get some crepes?”

“Sure,” the waitress replies curtly, taking her sweet time in heading back to the kitchens. Max can tell she’s still upset, and for half a second she contemplates holding up her hand, rewinding so she can greet her enthusiastically instead and drag Chloe to the counter so she can prevent the damage from ever happening in the first place – but she doesn’t. She doesn’t even know if she still has her powers anymore, but regardless, she doesn’t want to take that chance.

“Overpriced garbage,” Chloe mutters, startling Max out of her own thoughts.

“Hey, crepes are crepes,” she says with a smile, reaching a hand out to tuck a lock of faded blue hair behind Chloe’s ear. “William loved them.”

It’s a risk, but when Chloe turns her face and locks eyes with her, Max knows it was the right thing to say.

“Yeah, he did,” Chloe replies softly, the ghost of a smile playing across her lips. Something in her eyes lights up – not a fire, but maybe just a spark, edging its way closer and closer to the kindling Max knows must be there somewhere, and Max squeezes Chloe’s hand again.

This time, the hand squeezes back.


	3. Popcorn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chloe gets Max high for the first time.

They still haven’t so much as washed Frank’s old bed sheets, let alone replaced them. That, coupled with the dim lighting inside the van, their general lack of motivation, and the sheer amount of fast-food they stuff themselves with on a regular basis, is a potent recipe for filth. The cotton feels stiff as Max reclines on it, gazing blankly up at the ceiling. Within moments, Pumpkin is on the mattress next to her, creeping onto her chest and settling onto her two front paws for a nap.

Chloe leans against the doorframe, watching silently, her heart a clenched fist in her chest. She can taste acid and regret, sharp as a razor, on her tongue. Max was always so bright and colourful, so positive, so full of light. An endless rainbow in a stormy sky. The only thing negative about her were the negatives she used to make new prints for her portfolio, and at least those were creative. This was more than sympathy, more than empathy; there was something so _wrong_ about a depressed Max, like the sun had turned black or the grass red. It wasn’t natural, wasn’t right.

And it was all her fault.

“Hey Max,” Chloe calls.

The girl on the bed starts, sitting up suddenly with an accompanying chorus of creaks and a cry from Pumpkin, who tumbles to the carpet and speeds away to the kitchen, hackles raised. “Oh! Hey, Chloe. I didn’t see you there. What’s up?”

“I just had an idea. I’ll be back in a few, okay? It’ll be fun, I promise.”

*

Chloe sits on the bed beside her, the springs groaning underneath the weight, and pulls a plastic baggie from one of her coat pockets, dropping it on the bed to free up her hands as she scoots to the edge and rummages around under the mattress for something. Gingerly, Max brushes her fingers across the plastic, picking it up between her middle and pointer fingers like it’s toxic. It’s not like she hasn’t seen weed before – of course she has. She’s eighteen, she’s been to parties. It’s just never really been her thing. She can hear the dried buds rustling against one another as she turns the baggie over, handing it back to Chloe.

“What, you some kind of weed virgin?” Chloe jokes when she sees the look on Max’s face, having finally extricated a box of rolling papers from underneath the bed and began prepping a joint.

“No, I’ve – I’ve done pot before,” Max stammers defensively.

Chloe snorts. “’Done pot’ – yeah, alright, Professional Stoner Maximus.” Her tone is mocking but her twinkling eyes and grin – a real, wide, tooth-baring grin – betrays her.

“I mean, I’ve had a puff.”

“But not enough to get high, right?” Chloe asks, never taking her eyes off Max as she rolls the paper, tight and slim between her nimble fingers. Max only shakes her head, watching the process as if hypnotised.

By now, Chloe’s assembled one joint, and she makes to roll another before stopping abruptly. “You’ll only need the one,” she chuckles, reaching into the breast pocket of her flannelette shirt for a lighter.

Max’s heart beats faster in her chest, thumping so hard she’s sure Chloe _must_ be able to hear it – the mere thought embarrasses her, though she knows her best friend wouldn’t think any less of her for it. It’s not that she’s scared, not exactly; not with Chloe, anyway, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t at least a little nervous. Excited, too, no doubt, but nervous.

“Okay, so I’ll take the first puff, just to show you how it’s done, and then you can have a few, okay? So you just bring it to your mouth –” She does, wrapping chapped lips around the butt of the joint as she speaks, muffled, around it, “Then you flick the lighter –” She flicks the lighter, bathing her face momentarily in warm light, “And you suck in.” She does, inhaling deeply, the smouldering end of the joint bursting briefly into flame before dimming to a faint, steady glow.

“You breathe in, then you breathe in again, okay? Gotta do it twice to get it right into your lungs,” Chloe explains, handing Max the joint. She purses her lips, blowing smoke rings into the air above them. It smells acrid, sour. Not worse than cigarette smoke, just different, Max thinks.

Tentatively, she takes it, holding it daintily between her pointer and her middle fingers like she’s seen people do in movies. Then she slips it between her lips and sucks.

Immediately, she bursts into a fit of coughing. She can just hear Chloe laughing over the sound of her own spluttering and retching, renewed each time she remembers the tickle of smoke at the back of her throat, how strange the sensation had been that she couldn’t even get past it to the taste.

She’s just about ready to hand the rollie back, to give up, when Chloe speaks, urging her on. “Come on, Super Max! You can totally handle it.”

So she does, breathing in one, twice, ignoring how the smoke burns and singes at the raw flesh inside of her mouth and instead rolling it over her tongue, tasting it, letting it fill up her lungs, inflating them further and further until –

She breathes out, chest heaving. She doesn’t even cough.

“Sweet!” Chloe says, laughing. She makes no move to retrieve the joint, just looks eagerly at Max. “How do you feel?”

Max smacks her lips. In truth, she feels a little light-headed, like she’s already dizzy and feeling it – but Chloe’s practically a seasoned professional, and it would be embarrassing to admit to being such a lightweight. Besides, she wants more.

“Tastes kind of like popcorn,” she says instead, and Chloe chuckles. Smiling, Max raises the joint to her lips, and inhales.


	4. Cake and Wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max and Chloe celebrate their first one-month anniversary out on the open road.

When Max steps into the van, she can smell baking, overpowering orange and the faintest hint of vanilla. It’s an alien scent, and though not unwelcome, puts her immediately on alert.

“Chloe?” she calls out, peeking around the corner into the tiny kitchenette. No one is there, but the oven is on and the countertop is strewn haphazardly with ingredients and dirtied utensils; broken eggshells, smeared yolk, spilled milk, a dusting of flour like snowfall in early winter, a whisk coated in congealed batter. It looks almost as if a localised tornado has torn through their RV.

The thought _(tornado?)_ makes Max’s head spin, and it takes her a moment to calm her nausea. _It’s just a messy kitchen, dummy. Chloe’s just baking. It’s cool, everything’s totally cool._

Stepping forward, she calls out again. “Chloe?” No answer but the creak of the floor beneath her own two feet.

Suddenly, the door flies open again behind her, banging into the wall with a thunderous crash. Max’s heart jumps into her throat and she gasps, nearly tripping over her own feet as she spins around.

“Chloe! You scared me!” she cries, grasping at her chest. The girl in the doorway doubles over with laughter, so much so she drops the shopping bag she had been carrying. Once Max recovers, she just rolls her eyes and stoops forward to retrieve the bag, her wildly-beating heart betraying her lingering fright. “So. Not. Funny.”

“Come on, it was _totally_ funny!”

“Whatever,” Max retorts flippantly, smiling so Chloe knows she’s just playing around. “So what’s in the bag? And the oven, actually – which, by the way, should totally not be left on while you’re not here.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay Mom,” Chloe replies, before realising exactly what she’s just said. Her eyes widen, suddenly shining with unshed tears, and her hand flies to her mouth. “I mean – Max. Not Mom, I –”

Quickly, Max changes the subject, sensing that neither of them are ready for this yet. “The bag, Chloe?”

“Right. Um… To celebrate.”

Max cocks an eyebrow. “Celebrate?”

“Our one month anniversary,” Chloe explains, ducking to check the timer on the oven. “It’s red wine. And it’s uh, already opened if you wanna get it out – yeah, just like that, put it on the table, thanks – but I haven’t drunk anything out of it yet, promise.”

“We don’t have any clean glasses.”

“Who needs glasses?” Chloe jokes, grabbing the oven mitt from the top of the counter and removing a tray of lumpy-looking, black-spotted orange muffins. “Tonight we’re drinking straight from the bottle, bitches! But first…” Chloe hands her a muffin, juggling it between fingers. “Careful, it’s hot.”

“So, is this celebrating our one-month, or one month of constant driving?” Max asks playfully around a bite of orange and poppy-seed muffin as she draws up a chair and sits beside the counter. Within moments, Pumpkin is there, snaking between her feet, arrived from whatever nook she’s claimed for herself in the bedroom to scrounge up a bite to eat. She meows loudly, blinking wide eyes up at her and Max can’t help but giggle. “Aw, you’re so cute. I’m so glad we got you,” she says, breaking off a third of her muffin and laying it on the linoleum for the tabby, now almost twice as big as she had been as a kitten. Pumpkin meows again in thanks, rubbing briefly against Max’s ankles before darting away again.

“Uh… both?” Chloe answers, snatching up a muffin and busying herself peeling away the paper cup.

“Well, I appreciate the gesture,” Max says, and she does. They’ve gotten a little bit better in terms of domestic living – buying real groceries, cooking real meals (even if most of those meals consist of microwaved vegetables in ramen, with the flavour sachet added for ‘spice’) – but that’s usually Max’s responsibility, while Chloe handles funding (which Max deliberately ‘forgets’ to ask about, reasoning that sometimes ignorance is bliss) and gas to keep them going. So something like this – it’s nice, to know she’s appreciated. To know, or at least be reassured, that Chloe cares.

Pulling a sip of wine from the bottle, swirling the slightly acidic (but not cheap-tasting, she notes) liquid across her tongue, the roof of her mouth, her teeth, she begins to let herself think that maybe, just maybe, there’s hope of a future, a real home, for them both. Together.


	5. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is harder now than it's ever been before, with both girls grown accustomed to their restless, ever-changing life. But Chloe has a confession - and a decision - to make, one which Max knows as soon as she hears it that she has been waiting for this whole time.

Both women – for they are women now, girlhood left so far behind them all they have left to remind them of it is faded memories and fractured images – lay stretched out on the bed, relaxed atop fresh white sheets that smell like detergent and Chloe’s obnoxious (yet endearing) Axe body spray, a welcome change from the old, pot-scented khaki bedspread that had adorned it previously. Outside, the sun is just beginning to set, the last of its golden rays filtering through the RV’s crystal-clear windows, softening hard edges as it illuminates every surface it touches.

Max has her trademark gas station earbuds in, listening to some indie song as she flips through the stuffed pages of a photo album. Chloe watches her, absentmindedly smoking and stroking the sleeping cat in her lap with her other hand, running fingers that itch to comb through short, chopped brown locks through soft orange fur instead.

Eventually, Max looks up, meeting Chloe’s gaze. “Hey,” she says, smiling as she removes one earbud. She looks so beautiful, angelic, with her brunette head haloed by that shimmering yellow light, the same one that dances in her melting brown irises like a flame.

“Hey,” Chloe echoes. “Listen, Max, I was thinking…” Shifting slightly so she is sitting up straighter, Chloe clears her throat and stubs out her cigarette in the almost-bare ashtray on the nightstand.

“Hang on,” Max says, scooting closer so she’s sitting beside Chloe and pointing at one of the photographs she’s been looking at. “Do you remember this?”

Chloe leans in, wrapping one arm around Max’s shoulders and peering at the open page. She is warm, and her hair smells like peaches. “Totally. That was the day we saw the Grand Canyon. Yeah, look – there it is!” she exclaims, so enraptured by the images in front of her that she forgets what she had been going to say in the first place.

Well, almost. But not quite.

“It was so beautiful,” Max says dreamily, stroking a finger across their smiling faces, standing in front of the famous landmark, a great expanse of orange dust and rock the perfect backdrop.

“For a big hole in the ground, sure,” Chloe jokes, to the sensation of a half-hearted swat from Max’s hand before she flips the page. They sit like that, skin brushing skin, immersed in the scent of each other, for what seems like hours as they pore over the photo album. There they are, in front of the Canyon again; and that other polaroid there, that was when they broke down beside the road in the middle of nowhere and had to spend one terrifying night out in the desert before the tow-truck could come pick them up; and in one of the blurrier pictures, Chloe has captured Max in a moment of shock as she inspects the native plant-life and finds her finger pricked on a particularly sharp cactus-spine.

What Chloe remembers more than the landmarks, though, more than the physical places she has travelled, all of which seem almost to blur together, is the people – well, person – she has spent it with, and reminiscing upon that is a gift so precious she doesn’t want to fully unwrap it, lest that magical moment be over. It’s soothing, comforting; something about it reminds Chloe of being tucked in at night, of being covered by a thick, hand-made quilt, each sewn square depicting another memory, another shared experience, another moment when they realised how much they loved each other without having to speak the words.

But Chloe wants to. Oh, how she wants to.

“Max, I’ve been thinking,” Chloe says again, and this time Max stops, meeting Chloe’s eyes in an instant as she offers her full, undivided attention. Something in Chloe’s voice demands it, pulls her in; this is not a declaration that can be only half-listened to.

“About?” Max prompts gently, when Chloe’s been quiet for several moments too long.

“About… Arcadia Bay.”

It’s the first time since everything happened that Chloe has even acknowledged their old home, let alone spoken the name; Max is stunned, can’t help but show it on her face in the drop of her jaw and the wide, unbelieving set of her eyes.

“About Arcadia Bay, and what it means to… to be home. After travelling with you. Oregon – hell, the whole of this goddamned continent – never felt like home to me until I was _with_ you, out on the open road, travelling God knows where and not caring because no matter where we went, we always had each other.” Chloe’s voice wavers and Max wants to jump in, to say something, anything, just to reassure her, to let her know she’s there for her, but Chloe presses onwards.

“But even so, I know this hasn’t been fair on you. I’ve been running away from my problems, from dealing with… everything. With M-mom, with my step-father, with Frank and Rachel and… with my grief. I’ve been running away from all that, avoiding dealing with my shit, and dragging you along with me.

“And I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to face it. I’m not strong, not like you – but with you by my side, I know I can try. I want to face my fears, Max. And I want to settle down, with you. Whether that’s in Arcadia Bay after its been rebuilt, or in Seattle, or someone else entirely – I want to make a home. With you.”

Chloe wants to lean in so badly, aches to touch her lips to Max’s and probe out her answer that way, but instead she sits, silent, biting her lip in the awkward wake of her confession, and waits for the stunned girl to speak. So Max does it for her, surges forward and kisses Chloe so tenderly that the rest of the world falls away entirely and all she can taste is Chloe’s soft, slightly chapped lips, all she can feel is the peachy surface of Chloe’s cheeks as she cradles her face gently in her hands.

Chloe’s tasted like a lot of things before: cold pizza, cigarette smoke, weed, cheap wine, the salty tang of tears, which run down her cheeks even now for their encore.  But only one word comes to Max’s mind to describe the way she tastes now.

_Home._


End file.
